Wednesday, June 25, 2008

SourceForge Blocked In China

SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. A screen copy of the command "tracert www.sourceforge.net" shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

SourceForge Blocked In China

The current blocking may be related to the recent anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games, which began on 8 August in Beijing. Some days before, the author of a very popular free source code editor in SourceForge named Notepad++ start to boycott Beijing 2008, he said that the action is not against Chinese people, but against Chinese government's repression in 2008 Tibetan unrest. The boycotting is surely a politic issue, but refers to human rights problems in China.

Is that the reason of this blocking? Chinese authorities regularly blocks access to websites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects. That's what we have been. Blocked.

Monday, June 23, 2008

DB2ASP - Free Access Database to ASP Converter

DB2ASP generates an Active Server Page framework from an Access database. The framework contains Script subroutines to display and validate html forms and update the selected table or query. This won't do everything for you but it will jumpstart your development process by automatically generating tedious code.

Overview



So many of the applications I create involve using web-based html forms to update Access databases that one day I just got tired of doing the same stuff over and over and came up with the idea for this program. The framework created by the program will display a blank form and data view, you can enter data into the form and write the form data back to the database. The wizard eliminates about 80% of the redundant coding associated with these types of applications. You'll still have to make modifications to the resulting code to fit your specific situations.

You need VB6 with service pack 5 and DAO 3.6 on your machine for the db2asp to run.

UI Details



DB2ASP

Run db2asp.exe.

In the Register Form, if you don't have a register code, Click Cancel.

Click Select.

Select an existing Access database.

Select a table.

Select the fields you want to appear on the html form.

Select the filter method and search field.

Verify your selections.

Click Start.

Some ASP file which containing the JavaScript code will be generated on the output path. Copy this file and database to your Inetput/wwwroot path and run it. You can also edit it with your editor.

Code Details



The prgoram creates a Dim statement for each database field you selected. It also dims several other variables used throughout the framework.

Verify that sDBName points to a valid path on your server.

db.asp :

You can change your database connect string here. You can also change your database to another database system, such as SQL Server.

If you use SQLServer, change your connstr as below.
connstr="driver={SQL Server};server=localhost;uid=sa;pwd=;database=DatabaseName"

fileedit.asp :

This file is your data edit form. You can change your edit form interface here.

filelist.asp :

This file is your data listview interface.

filefilter.asp :

This file is your data data filter form.

Hints



Your Access database must have a field named "ID", and it should auto increase.

Your Access database must writeble. check the property of the database file.

Requirements



At least 32 MB RAM

MS Access 7.0 or higher (ODBC is not required)

Necessary privileges to write into the destination database

Price



DB2ASP Converter is totally free with no limited features.

Downloads



Click here to download totally free version of DB2ASP converter.

Installation



After downloading the zip program you should simply unzip it and run the db2asp program.

Contact



William Long
e-mail: williamlone(at)gmail.com
website:http://www.moon-blog.com

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Top Ten Best Firefox Extensions

Firefox extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Mozilla applications. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while minimizing the size of the application itself (from the official Firefox Extensions site). Here are my picks for the Top Ten Best Firefox Extensions:

Adblock Plus - Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

Video DownloadHelper - The easy way to download Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites. This works also for audio and picture galleries.

Greasemonkey - Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.

Web Developer - Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

Firebug - Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Delicious Bookmarks - The Official Delicious Add-on seamlessly integrates your browser with del.icio.us, the leading social bookmarking service on the Web.

FlashGot - Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page together at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers.

IE Tab - An extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.

StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.

wmlbrowser - Simulate WAP browsing by viewing WML (Wireless Markup Language) pages.

Gmail Manager - Allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. Displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

And last, here is a couple more of my favorite Firefox extensions ONLY for Chinese users:

Access Flickr! - Bypasses the flickr.com filter in Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, China and other banned countries and places...

FoxyProxy - FoxyProxy is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox's limited proxying capabilities. It offers more features than SwitchProxy, ProxyButton, QuickProxy, xyzproxy, ProxyTex, TorButton, etc.

Mozilla Firefox 3 Launch

Firefox download day is here! With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before. Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 34 months. This new platform includes more than 15,000 changes to improve performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 is built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.

Mozilla has finally launched the highly waited version 3 of their Firefox Web Browser.With their servers flooded with traffic ,they got an hour or 2 late to launch it,but it is now finally up.

You can download Firefox 3.0 by click the Download Day buttons.

Download Day - English

Friday, May 30, 2008

Google Translation Gadget

Google released a translation gadget which can translate blog or website easily from one language to another. According to wikipedia only 35.2% of the internet users are English, so it makes sense to add translation widgets for your blog to increase the reach for your blog.

Google Translator widget supports lots of languages as of now if your primary language is English. This widget also served through Javascript and carries a link Google Translator and Google Gadgets.

Add the Google Translate gadget to your webpage is quick and easy. Its offer instant access to automatic translations of that page. Go to Google Translate gadget, select the language of your webpage, copy and paste the HTML to include the gadget on your webpage.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Top Ten China Mobile Site

Opera released a State of the Mobile Web: First Quarter, 2008 report recently. The report listed the top 10 Chinese mobile sites based on the statistics of Opera Mini.

Web portal content and search engine access is extremely popular in China, accounting for nearly 55% of the traffic.

E-commerce and e-mail are not yet as popular in China as in other parts of the world. Together, these two categories combine to create less than 2% of overall Opera Mini traffic in China.

Top 10 sites in China

www.sina.com.cn
www.baidu.com
www.google.cn
www.ko.cn
news.sohu.com
www.xiaonei.com
www.3g.cn
www.paojiao.com
www.188bet.com
www.feiku.com

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Install WordPress MU On IIS With Url Rewrite

I have successfully installed WordPress MU on my Windows Server 2003 running IIS 6. To be honest, I know that WPMU is not full compatible with IIS right out of the box. It relies heavily on apaches mod_rewrite, which IIS isn't capable of. The only IIS fix for permalinks I've seen have either been via a special filter named ISAPI_Rewrite.

ISAPI_Rewrite is Apache mod_rewrite compatible URL rewriter for Microsoft IIS server. It is compatible with Apache mod_rewrite making it possible to move configurations from Apache to IIS and vice versa just by copying .htaccess files. I have tested with Wordpress 2.x or Wordpress MU 1.3.x, it's work. This is also works in IIS Mod-Rewrite Pro, but IIS Mod-Rewrite Pro have no free version.

To enable Clean Permalinks on Wordpress MU on IIS, follow these steps:

  • Install PHP and MySQL following the vendor's instructions.

  • Install ISAPI_Rewrite.

  • Install Wordpress according to the vendor's instructions.

  • Open with a text editor the file wp-settings.php, located in Wordpress root directory. Add the code line



$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_ORIGINAL_URL'];

  • Log on to Wordpress as administrator, go to admin panel, open the "Permalinks" settings page, and set the permalink structure of your choice. Apply your changes.

  • Wordpress is supposed to automatically create a file with name ".htaccess" in its root directory. Open with a text editor the file .htaccess, copy it and paste into httpd.conf in ISAPI_Rewrite directory.


Now we have a WordPress MU with clean permalinks on Windows Server 2003 running IIS 6.